


Cartesian Function

by prairiecrow



Series: Geometry [9]
Category: Knight Rider (1982), Torchwood
Genre: AU: Tosh and Owen Survived, Almost Breaking Asimov's Laws, Alternate Universe, Androids, Destiny (Or So John Thinks), Episode Remix, Established Relationship, He Also Has An Ace Up His Sleeve, Jealousy, John Hart Is A Manipulative Bastard, KITT POV, M/M, Possessiveness, Protectiveness, Sometimes Ianto Does Come First, The Thin Line Between Man And Machine, Threats of Violence, True Names
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-15
Updated: 2014-01-15
Packaged: 2018-01-08 20:33:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1137084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairiecrow/pseuds/prairiecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of the "Geometry" universe's version of "Fragments" and "Exit Wounds", KITT returns to the abandoned building to collect evidence — and runs into more than he bargained for beneath a full moon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cartesian Function

Apart from the distant intermittent rumble of an occasional car passing on the nearby freeway, the dark and derelict building was silent beneath the pale light of a full moon — even though it was now considerably more derelict than it had been yesterday morning, the broken bits of its interior had mostly settled into a state of equilibrium. A few of them shifted or skittered away under KITT's booted feet as he picked his way deftly through the shattered internal spaces, but his sonar and infrared scanning abilities enabled him to identify the most stable surfaces to trust with his weight; that intelligence, combined with selective use of his ion beam generators at a much lower than usual power setting to burn away intervening pieces of fallen structure, had allowed him to retrieve the remains of four of the six explosive devices John Hart had set to ambush the Torchwood team roughly thirty-one hours previous, including the one that had crushed his own android body beneath tons of wreckage in the building's basement.  

He'd insisted on undertaking this recovery mission alone — the structure was still far too dangerous for any ordinary human to risk their lives in, and Jack was occupied with Ianto this evening — so when he emerged back onto the cracked and weed-littered tarmac at 23:42:36 with a Torchwood evidence collection satchel over one shoulder, and headed toward his motorcycle parked at the end of the lot, the last thing he expected to hear was a cheerful drawl from somewhere behind him:

"Nice save on the nuclear plant!" 

KITT spun, right hand instantly raised as blue ionic energy surged into its palm, ready to fire — 

— pointed directly at the man who was straightening from where he'd been leaning, with folded arms and one foot braced against the brickwork, against the cracked exterior of the warehouse. A man who, unfortunately, was no stranger to KITT at this point: Jack had clearly identified him as Captain John Hart, and his face had been associated with a great deal of mayhem and death in a remarkably brief period of time. A man who immediately raised his own hands to shoulder level, palms open in what was probably a universal gesture of surrender. "Whoa! A little trigger happy there, Sex Toy…" 

KITT scanned him carefully in the darkness, head to toe and back again: he was carrying two automatic handguns, a sword, various concealed firearms and blades, explosives sewn into the lining of his pseudo-military jacket… in short, a full complement of assorted instruments of destruction. None of it was currently in play however, which KITT took as cause for cautious optimism that this encounter might not turn out to be a violent one. "What are _you_ doing here?" 

Hart shrugged. "Enjoying the scenery, same as you are." He gestured grandly at the chilly spring evening around them. "A full moon's light, a million glittering stars… are all this planet's nights so magnificently —?" Then, no doubt seeing the manifest skepticism on KITT's face, he sighed and slowly lowered his hands, still taking care to keep them well away from the holsters on his thighs. "All right, I wanted to get a closer look." 

Given where Hart's attention was currently directed, the conclusion was obvious: "At me?" 

"At you," Hart nodded. "Was it _your_ idea to use your own internal fusion cells to restore temporary power to the plant's systems and buy your friends time to avert the meltdown?" 

The blandness of the question didn't defuse KITT's wariness. "As a matter of fact, yes. It was." 

Now Hart was the one doing the visual scanning. "Must've taken a lot out of you." He took a step closer, casual but deliberate. 

KITT stood his ground, confining his reaction to a brighter burn of gathering power in his extended hand and an impulsive flare of light along his jawline, betraying his internal agitation even as he issued a quiet steely warning: "I still have more than enough left to deal with the likes of you."

Hart stopped. His smile was almost kind. "You're afraid? Of _me?_ " He opened his hands again, this time indicating his own fragility. "What could I, a squishy sack of meat, possibly do to you, a steel-framed machine — and a functionally immortal one, at that?" 

"You entombed Captain Harkness alive for one thousand, eight hundred and seventy-four years," KITT retorted. "And blew up a significant portion of Cardiff. Frankly, I wouldn't put anything past you." 

The smile became a mischievous moue. "Ooooh, does he make you call him _Captain_ in bed? I'll bet he does!" Those pale eyes were still scanning him, their laser intensity belying superficial playfulness. "What _are_ you, anyway? Some kind of combination pleasure droid/battery/night light?" 

KITT felt another flare of light break over his skin, running up his visible throat from the tightly wrapped collar of his black camel hair coat to his jawline and back down again in a display roughly equivalent, unfortunately, to a human blush — and about as controllable. "What I am is none of your concern!" 

"Oh, but I think it is." Another slow step forward, his elegant leather boot-soles crunching in the fine rubble of the explosions he'd caused. His gaze was positively piercing as he indicated KITT's body with a sweep of one hand. "Look at yourself, Sex Toy: the mystery machine, a hybrid of past and future technology — a chimera stitched together from two different timelines, which should doom it to a spectacularly messy end, yet lo and behold! It's temporally stable." Another step, leaving less than twenty feet between them. "A creature designed to do all sorts of useful things, including pump out enough power to stabilize a failing nuclear reactor, pull data from any system imaginable — or serve as a sophisticated clockwork whore. Haven't _you_ ever stopped to wonder what you are? Or what you're doing here, on the same planet with _him?_ " 

"The answer to that question is simple," KITT countered — but he let his right hand drop into a position of readiness rather than overt threat. After all, if Hart started to go for any weapon whatsoever… well, the man's reflexes were only human. "I'm here to protect him — and I will do so, to the best of my ability. Make one move against Captain Harkness, or any member of his team, and you'll have to get through me first. And if you think I've performed impressively so far, trust me, you do _not_ want to see me in action when I'm motivated by loyalty." 

Hart's lips wore a crooked smile, half amusement and half bitterness. "That's not his real name, you know," he remarked. "None of it: not _Captain,_ or _Jack,_ and certainly not _Harkness_." Another slow step closer, like a serpent trying to hypnotize its prey with an unhurried rhythmic approach. "He has a true Name all right, but you'll never know it." 

KITT was no mouse — and he wasn't impressed by nonsensical statements. "And I suppose you do?" 

Hart shrugged with elaborate unconcern, swaying nearer. "He's never told me. He never had to. I know it because I was meant to know it. It's destiny." 

KITT inclined his head dubiously. "You believe in destiny." 

A taunting smirk. "And you don't?" 

"Of course not," KITT replied instantly. "The concept of destiny is simply human mental shorthand for the cognitive intersection of perceived causality with your tendency to find patterns in everything, even where no patterns objectively exist." 

Hart laughed, a wider grin wrapped round a cough of mockery. "And he actually thinks you have a soul!"

KITT unleashed his best icy gaze, full of hauteur. "What the good Captain believes or does not believe about me is irrelevant to my present function."

The smile turned vicious. "As what, his bedwarmer?" 

KITT always carried himself with perfect poise, but now he found that his spine wasn't quite as stiff as it could have been. "Unlike you, at least I know my place." 

"You never did tell me why you're out here," Hart mused. Closer, foot by foot, his narrowed eyes relentless. "Reliving past failures? Or maybe wondering why he's not with you tonight? Who _is_ he with, by the way? Eye Candy?" 

The smooth flow of processes in KITT's cognitive matrix started to snarl, because indeed, a quick GPS check revealed that both Jack Harkness and Ianto Jones were no longer in _The Boar and Rose_ , where they'd been ensconced for nearly two hours and seventeen minutes, but rather were in the Torchwood cabriolet, headed toward Queen Street — and Jack's private apartment, no doubt to indulge in some more intimately physical forms of comfort than a pub setting could offer.  

Hart's smile was like a slash of white acid, his tone a saccharine croon: "Aw, and I thought _you_ were his current favourite!"

KITT turned curtly away and strode back toward the place where his motorcycle was parked, snapping over his left shoulder: "There are no words in the English language fit to convey just how little I care about your opinion." 

"Sen-si-tive!" Hart singsonged after him. "Maybe he was right about you after all. Correct me if I'm wrong, but vibrators don't usually care about whether or not they're the go-to tool of choice for —" 

That was as far as he got, because when KITT wanted to he could move very fast indeed. Hart choked for a couple of seconds, struggling and kicking against KITT's right hand wrapped around his throat and pinning him six feet up the brick wall; KITT let him scrabble uselessly for purchase and claw at the wrist of the hand throttling him, driving home just how unbreakable an android's grasp actually was before fisting his left hand around Hart's gun belt and lifting an inch, taking some of the pressure off the human's windpipe. He was gratified to see that the Time Agent's eyes, very wide with fully dilated pupils, were now fixed unblinkingly on his face — and there was genuine apprehension there, ragged around each sip of precious oxygen.

"Give me one good reason," he said softly, pumping just enough additional energy into the palm of his right hand to make the burn felt, "why I shouldn't decapitate you right now and remove you from the equation permanently." 

Hart could still speak, albeit with difficulty. "How about — because you can't? I'm human, and last I checked — you've got some kind of governor in place — to stop you from ripping people's heads off —" 

KITT couldn't stop his fingers from tightening fractionally, enough to make Hart gag and kick harder — but only briefly, because the wretched human was perfectly correct. Still, the thought of Jack going through that same desperate struggle for air again and again, endlessly, over the course of almost _nineteen centuries_ infused his normally cool voice with a savage growl: "After what you did to him —" 

"I did what I had to do — to save us both!" Hart had managed to brace his feet against KITT's knees, and was using that as leverage to take more pressure off his throat. Both his hands were still wrapped uselessly around KITT's right forearm: at least he wasn't stupid enough to actually try hitting something far more durable than flesh and blood. "I could have left him there, you know — without the ring — he'd never have been found. I could have run — as soon as Gray set me free. Put that — in _your_ pattern generator — and see what comes out!" 

KITT considered the variables for a span of two point three seconds, and the results his probability generator produced were far from welcome. "I'm going to ask you, one last time: What do you want?" 

"His safety." Hart had gotten his breathing under control, and was now looking down into KITT's face with the composure of sheer determination. "His happiness. I know his Name, and because of that I've never lost track of him no matter how far afield his travels have taken him. Right now he thinks he wants you, his precious little team, but we both know that's not true. He's destined for far greater things than this puny planet could ever hope to offer him — and when he comes to his senses, I'll still be here, ready and waiting for him." 

The first part of that statement confirmed KITT's behavioural calculations. The second part, though… KITT stared at him in outright disbelief. "You're insane." 

"Put me down, _machine_ ," Hart spat, and after weighing the various possibilities — all of which led to exactly that outcome — KITT did so. As soon as his feet were firmly back on the ground Hart flexed his shoulders and gave his head a quick twist on his neck: KITT realized, with a quiet sort of atavistic horror, that he'd be wearing bruises come the morrow. "Take your own advice, and remember your place." 

"Rest assured, I've never forgotten it." He took a step back, giving the human room to tug the loose fall of his jacket back into something like studied disorder. That pale throat was already turning red. Bruises and second degree burns, yes, and KITT's own hand had left them there, but — _one thousand, eight hundred and seventy-four years._ Somehow, that debt had to be redressed.  

So he met Hart's gaze squarely and spoke with perfect conviction. "But you left out perhaps my most important function of all: _I keep watch_. And I know who you are now, whatever _your_ 'true Name' might be. Get too close to him again and I'll sound an alarm fit to bring the heavens — and Torchwood — down around your ears. That's a promise." 

Hart looked up at him, and another slow smile blossomed over his angular face like deadly nightshade. "And I have no doubt you mean every word," he purred, then slipped past KITT as lithely as a healthy rat deserting a sinking ship. KITT didn't turn to watch him leave: he wanted nothing more to do with this human, this man who had provoked him to the point of causing physical harm, and so he waited for those brisk footsteps to indicate that his adversary had gotten far enough away to —

"Oh, and by the way…" KITT heard Hart pause about thirty feet away, and turn. A couple of small bright beeps sounded, and a wave of — something, a set of internal variables falling into alignment — washed briefly through KITT's systems. "Your appearance management interface circuit was damaged in your original Rift transfer. I just fixed it for you." A final smirk, sleek and full of teeth. "Hope you don't mind." 

Shocked, KITT spun round — and this time no flare of light through the channels beneath his skin betrayed his emotional state. He caught the thin edge of Hart's smile as the human turned away again, but could only stare after him as he keyed open a minor rift and walked through it, leaving a dismayed android alone beneath the mute unblinking moon — and burdened with far more questions now than answers.

THE END


End file.
